"There are no limit in size?"

[Jeronimo]

In the kickstart promotion video, at 0.50min, JC mentioning that "you can build anything you want, space ships, cities, orbital stations, there is no limit in size"

 

Jc mentioning here the infinity big, from voxels of 25cm

 

What about the infinity small? or at least smaller than 25cm?

 

 

NQ is missing something in the building part, 25cm voxels will not allow to build a chair, a table, a lamp, a frame, or any decoration objects, to put in (and in fact the only things you can build) empty space ships, empty cities, and empty orbital stations

 

Its like, think big, look at it from far, and forget about details

 

 

The content of DU is pretty well thought in global, at the scale of civilisations organisations, but what about in details, at the scale of one player?

 

What will one player see ingame?

Very detailed textured mesh based elements stuck on very contrasting flat voxel builds?

 

 

NQ shouldnt forget who will pay and play, who they are targeting when they talk to builders and coders, to lot of people who spend their days on 3d modeling softwares pushing the latest technologies, day by day, making scenes more and more realistic that you cant make anymore the difference.

 

I m talking about gamers who are also architects, interior designers, industrial designers, graphic designers, CG artists, animators, developpers, coders etc...

 

Is DU going to be the game for gamers who grew up with 1m3 blocks in minecraft, who got maturity now to play with 0.25m3 voxels?

 

NO right?!

DU isnt based on java and still have a bit more than 2 years of development

 

 

And i think the community should keep in mind to push further and further the possibilties of the building tool of DU to make it the greatest sandbox of all times

 

[ShadowLordAlpha]

smaller things like that won't be voxles as its more of a pain to build them then something most (not all) players would want to do. Instead i would think that they would make objects like that would be components that we place. Also just so you know 25cm is plenty small to build things like that if you want to they just won't look as perfect as you want them to.

[Shynras]

Maybe one day after release, now they need to focus on gameplay or we'll end up with a building simulator. it's good enough as it is for what the game is supposed to be.

[Code24]

25cm is a heck of a lot smaller than most voxel building games. Add that in with dual contouring/ surface-to-surface feature and I think you underestimate peoples creativity if you don't think they can make furniture with that.

 

DU's voxel system is ambitious enough as is. Wait another 20 years and we might get a game with voxels at the atomic scale

[ShadowLordAlpha]

 

DU's voxel system is ambitious enough as is. Wait another 20 years and we might get a game with voxels at the atomic scale

building wood simulator

[DevisDevine]

building wood simulator

I can see it now, after 6 months of work someone puts out a blueprint for an ancient Mahogony tree or century old cypress that you can buy, slice up, and use in furnature. All the big buainess would want it over the cheap pine patterns found on the market.

 

 

But seriously, smaller than 25cm would be nice, but it destracts from the overall game right now. Components, mesh objects, that act as chairs and tables can replace this for now. Besides, having it a component can make it functional, as in using a chair to actually sit.

 

I can see a game in 5-10 years after release where we're dealing with 1cm voxels and interaction components. So you can imbed something in a chair you create, allowing you to sit. But tracking smaller sized cubes means more components for interactions, meaning more calculations and heavier server loads.

Now techniques like block groupings to form 1 larger block, or even creating a hallow body mesh of the object could reduce this. But it not only takes development time but also how will you handle component destruction if it is now 1 entity.

 

So I agree we should ask for it as a future goal, but I dont expect it soon.

[Jeronimo]

25cm is a heck of a lot smaller than most voxel building games. Add that in with dual contouring/ surface-to-surface feature and I think you underestimate peoples creativity if you don't think they can make furniture with that.

 

DU's voxel system is ambitious enough as is. Wait another 20 years and we might get a game with voxels at the atomic scale

 

20 years you said? later or before?

voxels are far beyond you might thought

 

[ShadowLordAlpha]

The problem with that video is that its not voxels its a 3d scan of an area taken as tiny points of data and then converted into a 3d mesh and then streamed from some data source to the graphics card.

[Kakakalaa]

The problem with this technology is how would you create things that are not in the real world?

[Jeronimo]

The problem with that video is that its not voxels its a 3d scan of an area taken as tiny points of data and then converted into a 3d mesh and then streamed from some data source to the graphics card.

 

its 100% 3D pixels, how they call them

= Voxels

watch carefully from minute 2.00

[ShadowLordAlpha]

its 100% 3D pixels, how they call them

= Voxels

watch carefully from minute 2.00

3D pixels are not voxels. and its 3D points that are used to create a large 3D mesh which gives it that ability. also the scene is static so it can't really be changed without loosing what makes it look so real. The lighting calculations alone make things like that hard to do in real time so you get rid of them which makes it so that its not used in large worlds that have times of day unless you want to store each different area for each time of day.

[Jeronimo]

3D pixels are not voxels. and its 3D points that are used to create a large 3D mesh which gives it that ability. also the scene is static so it can't really be changed without loosing what makes it look so real. The lighting calculations alone make things like that hard to do in real time so you get rid of them which makes it so that its not used in large worlds that have times of day unless you want to store each different area for each time of day.

 

Voxel = volumetric pixel = cube = 3d pixel

[DevisDevine]

20 years you said? later or before?

voxels are far beyond you might thought

 

https://youtu.be/5AvCxa9Y9NU

I first heard of this over 4 years ago, and it wasnt until 1-2 years they released how they do it.

From what I understand this system cannot be used by a voxel sandbox game. For games like GTA or COD it could work great.

 

As was mentioned, they take millions of data point scans, which could represent a voxel, but they dont necessarily do this. These points are then archived and sorted in a specific manner that allows them to select 1 out of a group that then corresponds to a pixel on screen. This soeting process takes time, think of it as their compiling.

So instead of rendering billions of points, then doing an average to display on screen, they choose 1 point to correspond to each pixel on the screen and render it.

 

The problem is, with a constantly changing dataset, as people mine amd build, it is not gaurenteed you can keep the file holding all the points in a specific order when its being modified.

 

Furthermore this only addresses rendering. Voxel games arent cpu hungry because of what they render. Think of MC and starmade and the low quality textures they have. The difficult task for these are to constantly calculate and update the positions of each voxel so that your computer knows what to render.

You would still need to calculate those points, then feed them into this program to sort before rendering. It strips the benifit gained.

[Jeronimo]

I first heard of this over 4 years ago, and it wasnt until 1-2 years they released how they do it.

From what I understand this system cannot be used by a voxel sandbox game. For games like GTA or COD it could work great.

 

As was mentioned, they take millions of data point scans, which could represent a voxel, but they dont necessarily do this. These points are then archived and sorted in a specific manner that allows them to select 1 out of a group that then corresponds to a pixel on screen. This soeting process takes time, think of it as their compiling.

So instead of rendering billions of points, then doing an average to display on screen, they choose 1 point to correspond to each pixel on the screen and render it.

 

The problem is, with a constantly changing dataset, as people mine amd build, it is not gaurenteed you can keep the file holding all the points in a specific order when its being modified.

 

Furthermore this only addresses rendering. Voxel games arent cpu hungry because of what they render. Think of MC and starmade and the low quality textures they have. The difficult task for these are to constantly calculate and update the positions of each voxel so that your computer knows what to render.

You would still need to calculate those points, then feed them into this program to sort before rendering. It strips the benifit gained.

 

i totally agree and more less understood it in that way

 

i wasnt comparing it in anyway with DU, i was just giving an example of how advanced where voxels in some other domains nowadays

[DevisDevine]

i totally agree and more less understood it in that way

 

i wasnt comparing it in anyway with DU, i was just giving an example of how advanced where voxels in some other domains nowadays

You are still confusing datapoints and what a voxel means now adays.

Datapoints are static positions used to construct polygons. Voxels as being used here are discrete sized objects that can be manipulated at the players will. It is comparing a Crysis map to a minecraft map. Crysis has a huge number of datapoints for the scenery, but only a select predefined set can be manipulated. Minecraft, while having fewer datapoints, uses voxels, but can be manipulated, thus constantly has to be recalculated.

[Violet]

Halving the size of a voxel increases memory by a factor of 8. There has to be a trade off in term of storage and network traffic.

 

That video was very impressive but its only storing surface information on each point, it does not need to stores what the insides of the wall are made from.

 

One day when we all have petabyte hard drives and 10 GB network connections it will be a amazing   

 

Thought the guy was being very cocky talking about his tech

[croxis]

A voxel is a zero size point in 3d space (volume pixel = voxel) with some information in that point. How that information can be visualized is a question. Minecraft chose to visualize it with cubes. This is why when the uneducated plebeians hear "voxel" they think a cubish looking thing. Voxels can be visualized with any sort of geometry the programmer wishes.

[Dominar]

Considering Minecraft's building block sizes are 1 meter in length, height, and width, I think we're better off than you give it credit for. The size of blocks in Minecraft never stopped anyone from creating masterpieces of detail and architecture. In Dual Universe, we don't even use blocks. We use Voxels. Voxels that are 1/4 of the size of Minecraft's blocks. We can make slopes, curves, spheres, and so much more. In terms of building limit, there is no limit. (According to JC). You can go as high as you want, as big as you want. However, you cannot go smaller than 25cm.

The devs deserve a lot more credit for achieving such a thing.

If you still are not satisfied, ShadowLordAlapha pointed out that we'll be given loads of 'Elements' to decorate our builds.

[Violet]

A voxel is a zero size point in 3d space (volume pixel = voxel) with some information in that point. How that information can be visualized is a question. Minecraft chose to visualize it with cubes. This is why when the uneducated plebeians hear "voxel" they think a cubish looking thing. Voxels can be visualized with any sort of geometry the programmer wishes.

 

You are quite correct, what I should have said is halving the space or doubling the resolution. I made a voxel style "minecraft" clone in unity and I implemented the marching cube algorithm to create a polygon mesh, I was using a 20cm voxel "size" and my world files were huge (2gb) for a 2km square area.

 

I read the paper on Dual Contoring and its very exciting but it does have its limits on fidelity

[Dominar]

You also have to keep in mind what Dual Universe is. It's an online MMO Sandbox hosted on a single server. I'm pretty sure they did the best they can.

[Violet]

I think introducing smaller core units for "decorative" items might be a nice idea down the road

[Dominar]

I think introducing smaller core units for "decorative" items might be a nice idea down the road

Perhaps.

 

 effortNot a bad idea, actually. However, will it be worth it in the long run? Will the time, resources, and effort needed to develop this feature be worth it? I doubt I'll use it very much. Perhaps for the first few weeks after release, until my patients run dry and I skip the details. I'm quite happy with 25cm voxels.

[Violet]

In-game decorative items are what makes a shared area belong to a player or group of players. They don't have to have realistic collisions (just a bounding box) but it would make player build much more personal.

[Jeronimo]

Guys voxel building games with 25cm voxels already exist, and for a while

DU will come out in end of 2018, so it means 2019 to not scare people

 

In 2019 there will be tons of other sandbox games that will have optimised the voxel build mode to smaller, faster and better

If DU comes out with 25cm voxels, it might be considered as outdated

 

Here a link of this year released EQ Landmark, which alpha begun in 2014 and have tons of other functions in its build mode which when used well, can shape a 25cm voxel to something almost flat

 

https://youtu.be/_EHoStrfFtI?list=PLrKBISvpfhOKpXbFz_C-EVY5kNqIu5Bze

 

 

And to remind the topic isnt what are voxels, but how to improve them

[Limyaael]

Most people will have ships a few dozen metres long at the smallest, and I'm sure some organisations will be making enormous transportation vessels and capital ships that are kilometres long. With such enormous constructs and huge amounts of 3D space to keep track of on the servers, you want to make the server load more strenuous by subdividing the already quite small quarter of a metre blocks to something even less? Most things that one would want to build at that size is probably more suited to being an element to save on space.